You can't beat a good sonnet, and you can write a sonnet without being married to the damned thing.

Donkeys are the most misunderstood and abused animals around the world.

I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.

I worked probably fewer jobs than most people, or fewer real soul-killing jobs than other people. I've been a typist, a typesetter, a keyliner, cappuccino-maker. I think I've been pretty lucky.

My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They're very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually cautiousness.

As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.

A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.

That's where I live, a junkyard in a neighborhood of junkyards. We have three tractors from the 1940s and '50s, several old pickup trucks, and a pile of scrap metal.

I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.

Time is never wasted coming to an old man bar.

I grew up with donkeys, as well as horses, but I'm more interested in donkeys.

If silence is to be broken, let it be with the majesty of music.

The most serious drawback to the telling-nothing approach is that it made that much more of a mystery of what had happened, and the nature of gossip abhors a vacuum of the unexplained.

The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one’s country

I have studied this Book, and I would never even dream of saying I've come to the bottom of the Word of God.

You can't look stupid if you're having fun.

The straight line leads to the downfall of humanity.

That's always been my philosophy. - I've never thought of the consequences of a necessary action.

Life is not about winning the race. Life is about finishing the race, and how many people we can all help finish this race. How we can start being kinder to each other

I love inspiring people, and if I can make a difference in one person's life, then that's success for me!